As President Obama pitched his gun control proposals to Minnesota law enforcement officials on Monday, more than 225 county sheriffs nationwide and 16 state legislatures were drafting resolutions and proposed laws challenging the Constitutionality of his initiatives, and vowing not to enforce any federal law they maintain violates the Second Amendment.
           
Obama, two days after the White House released an August photo of him skeet-shooting at Camp David, called for law enforcement officials to support his call to ban semi-automatic weapons and impose universal background checks for gun buyers during a speech at the Minneapolis Police Department's Special Operations Center, marking the first time he has campaigned for his proposals outside of Washington.

Rash action often fosters unintended consequences, such as in Burlington, Vt., where the city council has banned "assault-style firearms" and large-capacity magazines within city limits, prompting a local club to spitefully comply by prohibiting the local police department from training at its gun range.
               
The Stowe Reporter reports that the Lamoille Valley Fish and Game Club's executive board has voted to bar Burlington Police Department officers from training with the newly forbidden weapons in protest of the council's ban on "assault-style firearms."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) formally introduced her revived semi-automatic firearms ban "on steroids" Thursday (Jan. 24), which proposes to ban the “sale, transfer, importation, or manufacturing" of more than 100 specifically named firearms, including semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that accept detachable and fixed magazines of more than 10 rounds and have one or more "military characteristics."
               
According to an analysis by WND.com on Jan. 23, while Feinstein claims her "Assault Weapons Ban of 2013" will protect the rights of existing gun owners by exempting, or "grandfathering," already legally owned firearms and “disabled” weapons, her bill "would demand that the owners be investigated, photographed and fingerprinted; the type and serial number of the weapon be registered and local law enforcement certify that it is legal."

One of the 23 gun-control executive orders issued by President Barack Obama last week Wednesday calls for nominating a permanent director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a move Second Amendment advocates and gun owners have been lobbying for since 2006, the last time the embattled agency had a fully vested, fulltime leader.

Obama's nominee: B. Todd Jones, the ATF's acting interim director, who has also been serving as U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota since he was appointed to lead the agency in September 2011, essentially commuting between Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.